Talk:Avialae

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Good work, Dinoguy2. I think that is a splendid article.

Archaeopteryx - bird or reptile?

Your wikipedia page on Archaeopteryx says this:

Archaeopteryx, sometimes referred to by its German name Urvogel ("original bird" or "first bird"), is the earliest and most primitive bird known.

Archaeopteryx was a primitive bird that lived during the Tithonian stage of the Jurassic Period, around 150–145 million years ago.

The other page states that Archaeopteryx is a bird. This page suggests that it is a theropod dinosaur.
What is Archaeopteryx? It cannot be both a reptile and a bird!
Also, this page shows Avialae as a small subsection of the class Reptilia, while the other page shows Archaeopteryx as a genus under the class Aves.
If birds are reptiles, then there is no need for a class Aves. If birds are avialans, then why mark them as separate from Avialae? Jon (talk) 10:45, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

As you can probably tell, ranks like Class and the separations between them are arbitrary. Beyond that, no valid osurce has attempted to modernize and standardize the classifications. So the distinction between bird and reptile, Avialae, etc. will be murky and self-contradictory for the foreseeable future, unfortunately. Also, birds are theropod dinosaurs, so that in itself isn't a contradiction. The fact that some theropod dinosaurs get placed in a different class from others is due to the two different classification systems in use. On, the Linnean system, draws lines between groups, so a bird can't also be a reptile. The other, the Cladistic system, doesn't draw lines. Instead, groups are nested, so Birds are dinosaurs are reptiles. Avialae exists only in the later system, Reptilia exists only in the former system, and Aves exists in both and is used in several different ways, as explained in this article. Dinoguy2 (talk) 16:43, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

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What is branch-based clade?

Most researchers define Avialae as branch-based clade

What, if anything, does that mean? —Tamfang (talk) 16:50, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

It essentially means that it is a natural grouping of organisms defined by being more closely related to one species than to another.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phylogenetic_nomenclature Thunderhawk256 (talk) 02:01, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

Merge Proposals

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

The result of this discussion was unanimous support for merging Avebrevicauda, but no consensus regarding the merging of Pygostylia and Ornithothoraces. A Cynical Idealist (talk) 06:30, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

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Support: These merges are proposed as part of the effort on WT:DINO to clean up the taxonomic messiness that has become endemic to paleo wikipedia. The three proposed mergees are all node-based clades whereas Avialae is a branch-based clade, which has been established as the preferred mode of article consolidation. A Cynical Idealist (talk) 22:59, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

Support merging Avebrevicauda, oppose merging Pygostylia. While Pygostylia has sometimes been defined as a node-based clade, it has also been given an apomorphy-based definition, as all animals with a pygostyle homologous to that of modern birds. Pygostylia is a quite well-defined group with mostly stable membership (Sapeornis being the main exception), which can't be said about many other dinosaur clades (including Avialae). Instead of merging it with Avialae, we should expand it with more info.

Pinging @NGPezz:, who suggested retaining Ornithothoraces. Ornithothoraces is a node-based clade, so IMO we could merge it with Pygostylia. —Trilletrollet [ Talk | Contribs ] 10:21, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

I oppose merging all three pages in Avialae. Pygostylia (>360 google scholar citations) and Ornithothoraces (>730) are useful and well-defined clades in use for decades for pretty much all discussions on bird evolution. In my opinion, the Avialae article should prioritize discussing Archaeopteryx-like traits, such as those tied to the origin of powered flight or the divergence of birds from dromaeosaurids and troodontids. This is the perfect example of a situation where a granular multi-article approach is preferable, since the relevant body of literature is just as if not more granular. As for Avebrevicauda, it is a name which appears to be extremely rarely used in the literature (<15 citations on google scholar, only of few of which are really even relevant). As stated, Sapeornis is often classified as a pygostylian, so for most paleornithologists, Avebrevicauda is more-or-less a junior synonym of Pygostylia. I recommend merging Avebrevicauda into Pygostylia, rather than Avialae. NGPezz (talk) 14:22, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

One concern I would raise is that most of the information regarding Archaeopteryx-grade taxa is present on the articles for Origin of birds and Origin of avian flight. Any information added to Avialae would probably be mostly redundant. I'm not raising this to make any specific case, just that if only the merge for Avebrevicauda were to be executed, we would be left with a possible redundancy. A Cynical Idealist (talk) 03:48, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

Those two 'Origin' articles seem to be more about broad details and historical overviews, with competing hypotheses and the modern consensus (or, mostly modern, they don't seem to have been updated that recently). Avialae is a good spot to discuss the specific morphological changes associated with Archaeopteryx-grade taxa, which is only glanced over on the other two. NGPezz (talk) 15:31, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

@Trilletrollet @NGPezz What are everyone's thoughts on merging Ornithothoraces? I want to make sure all three possible merges are considered individually before coming to a consensus. A Cynical Idealist (talk) 03:41, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

As stated, oppose. Ornithothoraces is very convenient and well-defined, there's a lot that could be said about Enantiornithes and Euornithes (together) that does not apply to more basal avialans. NGPezz (talk) 03:46, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

Also, something I noticed when looking into the literature is that the taxon "Euavialae" (featured in the taxobox for Avialae) does not appear to exist. I couldn't find it on any existing database and it appears to be a complete fabrication. A Cynical Idealist (talk) 03:51, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.